"I coulda been a contender." Clearly, lots of parents and coaches believe that more practice over more years, is the key to success. But that's not necessarily true, at least according to a recent study.

It may surprise you to learn that San Francisco Unified School District no longer offers Algebra I to eighth graders. Why did this happen in the city that is home to so many of the biggest tech companies in the world?

A new study reports that there is no shortcut to becoming a faster reader. Like almost everything else in life, the way to get better at it is to practice. More practice leads to a broader vocabulary, faster comprehension, and faster reading.

This study compared the educational goals for kindergarten to fourth grade in six cities around the world, and came up with some eye-opening differences. See how the expectations in your school compare with New York City, London, Tokyo, Beijing, Johannesburg, and Moscow.

A review of the process versus product debate now going on in some educational circles. Is the objective to allow children to play, learn, and be creative, or to produce a recognizable product to show their parents what they did at school that day?

Comparisons of academically oriented early education classrooms with their play-based peers show little or no difference in academic outcomes one to three years later. Worse, multiple studies show that those who had received the academic-focused version of kindergarten, ended up being less well adjusted socially and emotionally.

Originally conceived of and implemented as a safe place where young children made the transition from home life to the school world, kindergarten in America is now the place where they learn to read, master the concepts of counting and numbers, and basically enter the formal education system.